2x4 storage bench

For a good while we’ve been using one of those cheap black plastic shallow things just inside our front door as a place to keep our shoes. Naturally shoes would pile up, and it’d become a bit of a mess.

I decided early on that I wanted to up my woodworking game and really go all out on the next project, which would be a nice bench to put by the front door. I was going to make it so you could open up the top, I had decided I was probably going to use oak for the project.

I modified the dimensions to suit our needs and went and picked up the 2×4’s from the big box store and got to work.

I previously joked that I estimated the time to complete this project from beginning was somewhere in the realm of 8 hours. 7 hours and 56 minutes of which were spent sanding. Sooooo much sanding…

At any rate….after I had everything screwed and glued I got started with the stain. I asked the wife if she preferred Watco’s Cherry or Dark Walnut by presenting her with a test piece of 2×4 with each stain applied to one side. She opted for the Dark Walnut.

I was satisfied with the results after 4 coats, and then proceeded with 4 coats of wipe-on poly, sanding with 320 between coats and finishing up with some 0000 steel wool.

After the bench was complete I left it up to the wife to outfit it with some baskets. I am happy with how it turned out over all.

The total cost for materials (factoring in that I already had the stain/poly) came in at less than $30….well for the bench itself. The wife shelled out $45 for the baskets! Ugh! lol

-- Josh // "If trees could scream, would we be so cavalier about cutting them down? We might, if they screamed all the time, for no good reason." - Jack Handey